Well considering so far for hosts me and doriantoki had thrown our names in the hat. If we do end doing the tourney should we include the loser's bracket?

I can probably handle the winner's or loser's bracket like before. I know I haven't been pumping out Arena vids over the last week but my schedule should be less hectic after this weekend so I can probably host again but I wouldn't mind if either doriantoki, Gaignun or even FFMaster have the spotlight in this one.

I'll still host in case my help is needed but just figuring that someone else should mainly have the ball. I can this time pick the maps for the brackets in whatever order. Do we all want to do large/medium/small, small/large medium, small/medium/large, or medium/large/small? Either way I'm all for it

Its probably time to revisit the Problem Maps thread (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7646.0). If nothing else to pick some maps to eliminate from the pool for the tourney. My vote would be to kick due to chokes and/or unit placement.

A lot of those maps are pretty bad. It's debatable whether maps with chokepoints are actually bad or not. fdc iirc doesn't believe they should be banned, as do a few others. - teams should have a way to counter the chokepoint, which isn't really hard at this point in time. The only map I would question from your kicked maps list is 19, which I did a quick location fix and terrain fix. It's got camera issues though, like in vanilla. No real chokepoint, and the fight is mainly on the ground with Archers usually running up the boxes to fight on the roof. Check the map out yourself.

EDIT: As for hosting, I'm not sure if I can do it. Slow video upload speeds are my main problems, as well as new session for uni starting soon.

Upload speeds are a problem for me, but I can host a few battles if you need help. New laptop means I can finally screen capture AND run an emulator! Just don't hate me if you think my commentary stinks!

I actually just watched your video and you're commentary isn't bad at all. sure you get caught up in the excitement at times but when I post some more battles today you'll learn that when you do commentary try to compose yourself so you don't talk way too fast. Plus also note Fanatic that I did do a match with your team before you updated it, so hope you don't mind it

Lower the duration of sleep to ~20-30. The AI tends to prioritise offense over removing this status effect, leaving its team member to sit out for up to 8 turns. Maybe this is just from my experience, though.

Remove the damage bonus to frogs, and give the frog status a duration if possible. Alternatively, have the frog status expire when the frog dies. A frog is currently worse than no party member at all. Units tend to die as soon as are afflicted by the status, partly due to the damage bonus, and a dead frog takes two turns to be brought back into the fight: first to revive it, and then to restore its status. If a single unit must both revive and restore the status, then both the frog and that unit are practically out of the fight - the frog by attracting all of the opponent's attention, and the healer by resuscitating the frog every turn. Also, the AI does not consider whether units are afflicted by frog when choosing whom to revive. If a frogged healer and an unfrogged damage dealer are dead, the AI will choose to revive the frogged healer and leave the damage dealer to perish. These changes will give teams a better chance to shake off the affliction.

Prevent PA*WP skills from doing critical hits. The damage of these skills can get high enough already with the right equipment.

Increase the Y value of Haste to make it more competitive with Masamume.

Change the vert of Masamume from 2 to 1.

Make the "-ton" skills evadeable. (Edit: On second thought, this might be unnecessary. Healing magic is less effective on units that are put at 40 faith to make these skills effective.)

Remove the elemental weakness of flame, ice, mythril, and gold shields. I feel that these weaknesses are inhibiting their adoption, especially for the primary shield users, the armor classes, who cannot freely cover these weaknesses with Black Costumes, Rubber Costumes, and Santa Outfits.

A wilder suggestion: replace Punch Art's quadratic formulae with linear ones. At present, Punch Art has to be kept weak for all but PA-stacked monks for the sake of balance. Replacing the formulae with linear ones will open up Punch Art to other classes.

A suggestion for the distant future: add some water magic. Suiton (and Leviathan, which is hardly ever used) are the only two skills representing this element at the moment. Tacking water magic onto a class already burdened with choice (like sages) might not be the best way to go about it, though. Perhaps water, earth, and wind magic can be added to a new class, if that will ever be possible. Then, the Thief Hat can become the counterpart of the Venetian Shield. Alternatively, leave status affliction to oracles and redesign mediators as water, earth, and wind wielders.

Also, do guns and magic guns belong to different categories? If people are not pleased with the use of magic guns for PA*WP skills, you could prevent high-PA classes (namely archers) from having access to magic guns.

Sorry about not being around the past week. It was a bad time for my internet to die. Anyway, I want to set everything in stone now. Anyway, here is a draft of the rules.

Rules0) Tournament will be run on the latest 137, whatever it may be. Only bug fix versions from here.1) Teams. Teams submitted must follow the rules stated here: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=6179.0 and will be sent to FFMaster. No edits are allowed to be made after the deadline, but changes before the deadline are allowed.2) Matches. Best two out of three advances into the next round. Initial bracket placement will be randomized(I actually want to seed a few people, up for debate). The first map will be chosen from a list of SMALL MAPS. The second map will be chosen from a list of LARGE MAPS. The final map will be chosen from a list of MEDIUM MAPS. (Rule still up for debate, especially what defines as a small/medium/large map. We need to set up a time where we can discuss on IRC, or just post here).3) Elimination. The tournament will be double elimination. This means that for your first Match loss, you will be placed in the losers bracket. After losing in the losers bracket, you will be eliminated from the tournament. For the finals, the winner from the Winners Bracket and the winner from the Losers Bracket will play. The winner in that final game will be deemed Champion(up for debate, some groups like Team Spooky allow for a bracket reset when the losers bracket player wins, which means they play one final game to determine the champion. Once again, come on IRC or post here to discuss)EDITRule 4) THE COLOUR PALETTE PURPLE (05) IS BANNED DUE TO BUGS. Wow, that sounds so stupid when I read it.

I'm all for the current rules for this tournament but do you think for the next version release for the tourney you can re-balance the WP of the magical guns and make them 16 WP so its even enough as it is.

1) I'm assuming its 1 team per person? Or will more be allowed as filler for the brackets? If more are allowed, I'd be all for the Primary Team automatically advancing regardless of the outcome of the match if paired against a filler team in round 1.

2) I've already said my piece on maps. I'll go with whatever, but there are a handful of maps that at least need to be considered for bans. My main objection for choke point maps is if you run a team with Petrify, that can really screw you over on some maps. There are other instances where it can really hurt as well, like if there is a corpse between you and the enemy on the choke.

3) One suggestion I'd have as far as seeds go would be to seed the match casters so they wont have to cast their own teams. It makes the tournament more fun to watch when the caster doesnt have an obvious bias as far as who they want to win.

I'm all for the current rules for this tournament but do you think for the next version release for the tourney you can re-balance the WP of the magical guns and make them 16 WP so its even enough as it is.

Each Magic Gun fires Spells of different Y values. Giving them all the same Y value just makes the Blast Gun the best one. They're probably a bit too far apart, (Blast Gun and Glacier Gun might be able to gain 1 WP each well enough) but roughly where they should be, because Fire is both weakest in terms of the Ys of the Spells fired and suffers the most in various weather effects whereas Blast Gun can do nothing but benefit from random elements.

Remember: Magic Guns don't have cardcoded Y values, they fire the actual Fire, Bolt, and Ice Spells, as written on the Master Guide's front page.

Also, do guns and magic guns belong to different categories? If people are not pleased with the use of magic guns for PA*WP skills, you could prevent high-PA classes (namely archers) from having access to magic guns.

No, they're all the same weapon type. Magic Guns are just set to a different Attack formula than Non-Magic Guns.

Why would you even want to prevent that anyway? There's nothing wrong with an Archer/Paladin with a Blaze Gun. On average it was only an okay idea at best, or at least was every time I tested it.

1. It'd get redundant watching one out of the two teams participating on the same map over and over throughout the tourney especially if it favors them considerably like a sniping themed team getting a large map as their "Home Field" according to the RNG selection process.

2. There's a chance that we'd see two small, two medium, or two large maps in a row for rounds 1 and 2, and that alone would most likely give some teams an automatic two wins in a row, which is completely unfair.

One other thing I'd like to add is that the order should imo be "L/S/M" or "S/L/M" since L-S/S-L will obviously vary the meta-game more so than L-M/M-L or S-M/M-S.

Now in regards to bugs (Not necessarily a bug, but rather a discovery I made a while back and never bothered to report it), the Female Summoner for palette 5 is listed as yellow and should instead be purple

"Home Fields" reduce randomization and can easily skew matches. It also becomes very boring to watch, and if it's not entertaining to watch, why bother?

What makes a team great is not only winning best of, but winning best of regardless of the randomization as lot as the randomization is divided in a generally fair way (L/S/M or S/L/M). Having "Home Fields" doesn't prove your team is the best - it just proves your team is able to metagame a certain map the best and has a decent level of stability to scrape by two more wins. The whole idea of "Home Fields" also defeats the purpose of a Best of 5. We can assume that each team /should/ win on its "Home Field" by default... so they're 1 and 1... and now need to win 2 more to get the Match Win... so why not cut out the "Home Field" rounds because the end result is the exact same thing? All it does is provide to embarrass really shitty teams that'll get embarrassed anyway.

Tl;dr: Best of 5 - No, No, No, Fuck No, and Dear Sweet Merciful God No. That's a terrible, awful, no good, very bad, and very unfair idea that also becomes very boring to watch. Just no. Best of 3 is fair and concise, let's stick to it.